Chapter 2 #2
her to feed herself, just about. The teenage Saturday job in the shop that Flo had insisted on served her well during that
job search, she remembered, persuading her employers of her love of books and early grounding in the industry. Several years
on, though, progression had been slow, and recently she had been perturbed to observe doubts about her London life creeping
into her head. Was she ever going to make commissioning editor? And when—or if—she ever did, would she be able to cope with the even more intense pressure?
Even at editorial assistant level, the workload was brutal, and the stress was off the scale. But working in publishing had
been her dream and goal for as long as she could remember. Escaping from her small-town roots was part of that, of course.
Take the hard-won publishing job away, and Jules wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. But other worries were paramount today.
There would be time enough for existential angst later.
Settling her aunt in the seat behind the till and turning the shop sign to “Open,” Jules made an initial survey. It was perfectly obvious Flo could not climb the three flights of stairs to her flat. Even if she could physically drag herself, which Jules doubted, it couldn’t possibly be safe.
“I can sleep in the office,” said Flo, following Jules’s gaze up the rickety wooden stairs. “And I can wash in the customer
loo—at least I can when the shop is shut... It’ll be fine. I’ve got to trade!”
At that moment, the doorbell gave its rusty clank, announcing the arrival of the first customer that morning. Flo turned briskly
in her swivel chair to greet them.
Rendered obsolete, Jules went to the little room at the back of the shop that Aunt Flo had always used as an office. There
was a sturdy wooden kitchen table that functioned as a desk in there, with an old PC, a dusty keyboard, and an ancient monitor
that took up half the tabletop. The PC was vital for accessing the database that allowed them to order in any book currently
in print. The ability to do that had been the center of the business in the past, but these days Jules knew it was easy for
booklovers to get the same service online themselves at the tap of a phone screen. She doubted orders contributed much to
Flo’s income nowadays.
All around, there was organized clutter. The in tray on the desk was overflowing with sales catalogs, and a shelf above the
desk bore witness to years of accounts, all on paper, in a series of dusty file boxes arranged tidily in date order.
Settled on a cushion in front of the French doors, marooned in a sea of late-winter sunshine, was a shaggy old black cat.
“Merlin!” Jules cooed.
Merlin opened one eye and regarded her benevolently, before closing it again and curling his front paws a little more tightly
into his chest. She crouched down and gently smoothed the fur between his ears with one finger, being rewarded with a throaty
purr. Merlin had been her friend and confidant as a young cat.
Goodness, she thought, he must be nearly twenty now.
.. Again, she felt guilt and regret at the amount of time she had allowed to pass without seeing him, selfishly following her own ambitions, not thinking about whom she had left behind.
Not that it had gotten her very far, she admitted.
No, her guilt was more than justified. Her relationship with Flo had been so one-sided, she recalled with shame, thinking of all the dedication and accommodations she had taken for granted.
God, she must have been a right royal pain in the arse as a teen.
Now, the tables were turned. Jules was grateful for the opportunity to start making amends.
Sighing, she continued her evaluation of the office. It was actually a rather nice room, leading as it did into the sunny
little courtyard garden, shaded now, but glorious on a summer’s afternoon. Inexplicably, the entire side of the room opposite
the desk was piled high with garden furniture. The painted wire outdoor sofa and two matching chairs occupied half the total
floor space, with a little wire table shoved hard up against them, partly blocking the way to the door.
Hands on hips, Jules looked around thoughtfully. Flo was right, it could work in a pinch. There was a customer loo adjacent
to the office and even a tiny kitchenette—hardly luxurious, but maybe...
“Aunt Flo?” she called, popping her head back into the shop where Flo sat, now in solitary splendor again, at the till where
Jules had left her.
“Darling?” she replied, twisting around and putting herself in danger of toppling off the chair, or at the very least dislodging
the propped-up leg.
“Don’t move!” Jules cried, starting toward her. “I was just wondering why all the garden furniture was stacked up in the office?”
“Oh, well, it was getting a bit rusty out there in the weather. I thought at least it should be inside through the winter.
We’ve had a couple of warmer afternoons recently, and I’ve thought about putting it out again, but...”
“So, you wouldn’t mind if I did it?”
“Help yourself, I wish I could give you a hand.”
Lugging all the furniture out single-handed was dusty, sweaty work.
Merlin repaired to the pile of ledgers on the desk to watch the action, clearly put out that Jules had ousted him from his warm cushion.
The long, curly wire bench was the last piece to move out through the French doors, and Jules had no option but to drag it with a tooth-clenching shrill screech across the floor.
Pushing her hair out of her face with a grubby hand, she took a moment, panting, and then pressed on, arranging the furniture in the way she remembered it before standing back to admire her work.
Spring would soon be here, and now Aunt Flo would be ready to enjoy it, but furnishing the garden was not the overall point of the exercise.
Jules went back inside and appraised the space she had cleared. Yes, that would work nicely, and now she needed a screwdriver.
“In the cupboard under the stairs on the first floor,” Flo instructed, in response to Jules’s inquiry. “But what on earth
are you up to?”
“You’ll see,” Jules told her.
Going back up to the little flat at the top of the building was a revelation after all those years. It seemed so much smaller
up there now.
There was no chance of getting Flo’s great, high iron bedstead downstairs, and it wouldn’t fit in the office even if she could,
but the little single bed in the second bedroom that had been hers was another matter.
The room she had cherished as a child was barely eight feet square.
Even the bed seemed smaller than she remembered.
She reminisced over the day Flo brought it back as a flat pack, a sweet, little, white-painted wooden bed that her great-aunt had let her choose herself from the bed shop in Exeter.
It had a pretty, curved headboard with a hole the shape of a heart.
It was just like Goldilocks’s bed in the fairy-tale book Jules loved her great-aunt to read to her.
She still recalled her excitement at seeing the bed and hearing that she could come and stay whenever she wanted.
At the age of four, Jules had started spending one, perhaps two nights a week with Flo.
The tiny second bedroom had been cozy, warm, and safe, the bed piled—as it was now—with fluffy feather pillows, a heart-shaped cushion embroidered by Aunt Flo herself, and a beautiful patchwork quilt in soft greens and blues.
Jules loved that quilt. She took a moment to sit on the bed, tears pricking her eyes unexpectedly.
And then she straightened, sniffed, and stood up. Things to do.
Flo had a decent tool kit in the under stairs cupboard, and Jules made quick work of dismantling the bed frame. In pieces
it was relatively easy to take down to the shop. Putting it back together again in the office was easy enough too, but she
got sweaty again dragging the single mattress down three windy, uneven wooden flights of stairs, and she was exhausted by
the time she had finished making up the bed, complete with the heart-shaped pillow, a dried lavender-smelling nightdress from
the airing cupboard, and a couple of well-washed white towels. Aunt Flo would miss her beloved bath, but, for now, she could
at least be in the shop during the day and have somewhere accessible to sleep at night. Which was not to say that her poor
aunt could manage without a lot of help. Help from whom...? But there was still the rest of the weekend to work on how
she was going to sort that one out. In the meantime, the toast with marmalade felt like it was a very long time ago.
“How are sales this morning?” she asked, when another solitary customer had finally made their selection and left.
“Huh. A local ordnance survey map and a couple of postcards are the sum total of a morning’s trade,” Flo admitted despondently.
“Hardly worth opening for.”
Jules pulled a sympathetic face. “I need to get us some lunch. Where’s a good place for sandwiches nowadays?” she asked.
“Sandwiches? Shan’t hear of it,” Flo protested. “I’m taking you out for lunch, no arguing. Plus, we’re expected.”
“Where are we going?”
Flo hesitated for a moment and then pointed. Just at the base of the high street the road split into two, leaving a cobbled
triangle and two shops cheek by jowl at the base. One was a deli now—Jules remembered it was an Italian ice-cream shop years
ago—and the other, a charming-looking restaurant with “Freya’s” emblazoned in white on an olive-green base.
“Cute,” said Jules. “Looks expensive. And what do you mean ‘we’re expected’?”
“None of your business how much it costs,” retorted Flo. “And we’re expected because I phoned up and booked a table while
you were huffing and puffing up and down those stairs.”
“This is going to sound silly,” Jules said, “but for a moment I was wondering if it was my old mate Freya from school...
you remember? But she’s doing some fancy chef thing in Paris, I think, so it can’t be.” Jules’s gut twisted with guilt. She
had been a rubbish friend, not keeping in touch.
“Ah, well, wouldn’t it be nice if it was,” said Flo enigmatically. And then she burst out, “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you.
It is your Freya. Honestly, I’d forgotten how you’ve always been so terrible at surprises, wheedling secrets out of me.”
“Oh my God!” squeaked Jules, her heart pounding. “What time is it? Gone twelve? Let’s go now!”
She impatiently waited until Flo had gathered herself together and positioned her crutch for “liftoff,” as she put it. With
her good hand on her crutch and Jules supporting the upper bit of the arm with the cast, they walked, after a fashion, down
the steps and across the road. Flo trod gingerly over the cobbles, but they arrived at the restaurant without incident. The
ma?tre d’ was just chatting charmingly as she showed them to their table when a tiny figure in chef’s whites and checked trousers
appeared as if out of nowhere.